Sunderland boss Mick McCarthy last night saluted his players for lifting the air of despondency which had threatened to wreck the Black Cats' push for the Premiership.

The threat of a sit-in protest against Bob Murray by sections of the club's increasingly-frustrated fans quickly vanished as the Wearsiders swept aside Nottingham Forest with an impressive performance to climb to the highest position of their Coca-Cola Championship campaign.

First-half goals from Julio Arca and Stephen Wright secured the Wearsiders' second win in four days and, having risen to eighth place in the league table, McCarthy's men will now be confident of completing a hat-trick of victories against Preston on Saturday.

"It does make a huge difference," said a buoyant Sunderland boss after his team followed up last weekend's 4-0 triumph at Gillingham with an equally-impressive defeat of Joe Kinnear's side.

"It makes a huge difference to the league table and it makes a huge difference to how people are feeling around the place. How people feel in the stadium, around the area and on the training ground.

"Everybody is feeling much better. I had started to sense an air of despondency creeping in because we hadn't started the season well and it was important for us to keep believing in ourselves; that's what the players did. "It was really important that we got that result at Gillingham on Saturday because that really set us up for this. If we had been coming into the Forest game having not taken anything at the weekend, it would have been difficult." Arca and Wright struck in the opening 11 minutes and for a manager whose side have made a habit of conceding early goals in the opening weeks of the season, the relief that the trend has been bucked was clear.

"It was a fantastic start," he said. "We have made a couple of iffy starts and been conceding goals after a couple of minutes so it's really pleasing to get another good start. "I'm very pleased with the result and the performance, absolutely. We have built on a very good performance and victory from Saturday and it was important to get three points at the Stadium of Light." Having failed to keep a clean sheet in their opening six league fixtures the Black Cats back-line has not been breached in the last 180 minutes of action and McCarthy believes his defenders have finally found their feet.

"We have been scoring goals all season and so I told them that it would be nice to keep a few clean sheets," he added. "We're now looking far more solid as a unit.

"If you look at the back-four, Stephen Wright, George McCartney and Gary Breen were three of my first-choice defence last season. Steve Caldwell has got up to the pace of it now and his partnership with Gary is looking much better than it did early in the season."

Meanwhile, the Black Cats are today due to discover how much compensation they will have to pay to Manchester City, Oxford and Mansfield for the services of Stephen Elliott, Dean Whitehead and Liam Lawrence. A Football League tribunal in Manchester will debate the summer transfers of the three out-of-contract players to Wearside and the decision is likely to have a major bearing on whether McCarthy is able to strengthen his squad.

Although Elliott has impressed this season, the loss of Kevin Kyle to a hip injury which is now expected to sideline him for three months means striking cover is still required.